The term ‘Inborn Nature’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct but intersecting axes. In the Zhuangzi tradition, as rendered by Watson, inborn nature (xing) names the original, pre-cultural constitution of beings — a standard against which all imposed forms, social rituals, and sensory excess are measured and found wanting; its loss is the signature of civilizational distortion. Jung and the Jungians recast this intuition in the language of instinct, archetype, and the lumen naturae: drawing on Paracelsus, Jung presents inborn nature as a primordial spiritual endowment — an ‘inborn spirit’ latent in the inner body — whose structuring patterns precede individual experience and surface in the inherited imagery of the unconscious. Von Franz and the typologists extend this to the constitutional disposition that determines introversion or extraversion, a factor whose biological basis remains obscure yet functionally determinative. Hillman, from his acorn theory, argues that inborn nature is not reducible to genetics or environmental conditioning but points to a third factor — the daimon or soul-image — whose claims arrive prior to and exceed both nature and nurture. Greene’s astrological depth psychology frames inborn nature as an archetypal predisposition inscribed at birth, structuring perception from within. The theological witness of John of Damascus introduces a countervailing position: virtues are ‘natural qualities implanted in all by nature,’ suggesting inborn nature as the seat of the good before transgression. Across these traditions, the central tension is whether inborn nature is a fixed original gift to be preserved, a plastic substrate to be developed, or an uncanny third thing that surpasses the nature/nurture binary entirely.
Compare the sacrificial bowls with the chips in the ditch, and you will find them far apart in beauty and ugliness; yet they are alike in having lost their inborn nature.
Zhuangzi posits that inborn nature is the universal original condition shared by all things, whose loss — whether through refinement or neglect — is the common fate of beings shaped by human artifice.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
if we must use cords and knots, glue and lacquer, to make something firm, this means violating its natural Virtue. So the crouchings and bendings of rights and music… in fact destroy their constant naturalness.
Zhuangzi argues that imposed moral and social structures — benevolence, righteousness, music — constitute a systematic violation of inborn nature, which is self-sustaining and self-sufficient without external correction.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
Horses’ hoofs are made for treading frost and snow, their coats for keeping out wind and cold. To munch grass, drink from the stream, lift up their feet and gallop — this is the true nature of horses.
Through the paradigm case of the horse, Zhuangzi demonstrates that inborn nature is a specific functional wholeness adequate to existence, destroyed the moment external training or management is imposed.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
inborn nature or to return once more to the Beginning. From this we may see that the world has lost the Way and the Way has lost the world; the world and the Way have lost each other.
Zhuangzi frames the recovery of inborn nature as identical with a return to the cosmological Beginning, making personal authenticity inseparable from metaphysical restoration.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
There is, nevertheless, an inborn ‘pattern of behaviour’ and just such a treasure-house, not indeed of anticipated, but of accumulated, life-experiences; only, it is not a question of ‘representations’ but of sketches, plans, or images.
Jung argues that inborn nature in the psychological sense consists not of innate ideas or representations but of structural patterns — archetypes — that organize experience without being consciously presented to the ego.
, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955thesis
animals have the natural light which is an ‘inborn spirit.’ Man at his birth is ‘endowed with the perfect light of nature,’ Paracelsus calls it ‘primum ac optimum thesaurum, quem naturae Monarchia in se claudit’.
Jung, citing Paracelsus, identifies inborn nature with the lumen naturae — a spiritual illumination present from birth in the inner body, constituting the deepest and most valuable endowment of the human being.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
Man at his birth is ‘endowed with the perfect light of nature.’ Paracelsus calls it ‘primum ac optimum thesaurum, quem naturae Monarchia in se claudit’… The light is given to the ‘inner man’ or the inner body.
Paracelsus, as interpreted by Jung, locates inborn nature in the ‘inner man’ as an eternally valid, coeval wisdom that persists and perfects itself even when the outer body fails.
, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955supporting
the virtues are natural qualities, and are implanted in all by nature and in equal measure, even if we do not all in equal measure employ our natural energies. By the transgression we were driven from the natural to the unnatural.
John of Damascus holds that virtue is the original inborn constitution of human nature — equally distributed — and that sin is a departure from this natural state rather than an expression of it.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
by nature made whatever is good His own and whatever is bad foreign to Him… For the virtues are natural qualities, and are implanted in all by nature and in equal measure.
Damascus grounds the goodness of Christ’s inborn nature in the theological claim that virtues are not acquired through deliberation but are constitutively present in all beings by natural implantation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
you are already born with an innate predisposition which expects certain things to happen… Certain inborn archetypal expectations structure what you filter out of experience as a child.
Psychological astrology proposes that inborn nature operates as a set of archetypal expectational structures — not a blank slate but a pre-formed filter — that determines which aspects of experience become psychologically formative.
, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Volume 1, 1987thesis
the ego is also a general structure and an archetype… It is an archetype in that it is based on a general inborn disposition to develop an ego and produce certain types of reactions and representations.
Von Franz identifies the ego itself as resting upon an inborn archetypal disposition, making the very capacity for selfhood a product of innate psychic structuring rather than purely environmental formation.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974supporting
a person is born with an innate paradigm that is not identical with genetic endowment and that gradually gives way in middle childhood as genetic factors kick in.
Hillman distinguishes inborn nature from genetic inheritance, proposing that the soul’s original paradigm — closest to the surface in early childhood and adolescence — is an irreducible third factor beyond both nature and nurture.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
What determines the original basic disposition is not known. Jung, in a brief description at the end of Psychological Types, says that it has probably a biological basis.
Von Franz acknowledges the epistemic limits of depth psychology regarding inborn nature: the original constitutional disposition is real and clinically recoverable, but its ultimate cause remains unknown, with only a probable biological parallel.
, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting
If we ask what determines the original basic disposition, the answer is that we don’t know! Jung, at the end of Psychological Types, says that it has probably a biological parallel.
Von Franz, elaborating Jung’s typology, holds that inborn constitutional disposition has biological analogues in animal adaptive strategies, while acknowledging that the psychological determination of the original type remains theoretically open.
, Lectures on Jung’s Typology, 2013supporting
inborn nature of, 65–67; judging, 199–200… and loss of inborn nature, 96–97
The index entry for the Zhuangzi confirms that the loss of inborn nature is a sustained thematic across the text, applied to animals, humans, and the conditions of sensory overload alike.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013supporting
the structuring patterns of animal conduct inhere in the inherited nervous systems of the species; and the so-called innate releasing mechanisms by which they are determined are for the most part stereotyped.
Campbell invokes ethological evidence for inborn nature as species-specific inherited behavioral patterns — innate releasing mechanisms — to ground his argument that human mythological structuring similarly derives from pre-experiential endowment.
, Myths to Live By, 1972supporting
Life is not only a natural process; it is as well, and even more, a mystery… what if its nature is not natural and not human?
Hillman cautions against the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ of reducing inborn nature to biological or evolutionary process, insisting that the soul’s code points toward a dimension that exceeds the natural order entirely.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside
inborn nature of, 65–67
Index reference confirming that the ‘Horses’ Hoofs’ section (pages 65–67) is the primary locus of the inborn nature doctrine in the Zhuangzi as rendered by Watson.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013aside